In recent years, the use of payment cards and other cash-substitute payment instruments associated with transaction accounts has increased. Accompanying the increase in use of such payment means is a rise in fraudulent transaction attempts, many of which are successful. In an effort to combat fraudulent transactions, various methods have been developed for the identification and prevention of fraudulent transaction processing.
Fraudulent transactions may be identified based upon a number of factors: the location from which a transaction request originates, the amount of transactions that have been conducted by a payment instrument within a certain period of time, etc. For instance, when a card is used in a geographic location where a cardholder is unlikely to be located, a transaction may be flagged as fraudulent and thus, the transaction may be declined. Unfortunately, many times transactions in such geographic locations may, in fact, be authentic; however, the transaction may be flagged as fraudulent resulting in an unnecessary decline of transaction processing. In the past, it was often necessary for a cardholder to telephone a card account issuing bank to advise them of upcoming travel dates to hopefully avoid the unnecessary declination of transaction processing for the cardholder while in an unusual geographic location. Such methods are ineffective and inefficient as travel plans for an individual often change and call centers are not always available to take a call from a cardholder and update a card processing system accordingly. Additionally, such methods allow for multiple instances of human error to occur even if proper travel dates and locations are provided (e.g., by the cardholder, the call center, etc.), lack flexibility, and do not allow for precise anticipated location parameters.
Inaccurately identified fraudulent transaction processing significantly impact electronic transaction processing systems as well as the parties involved with such systems. For example, a transaction request mistakenly identified as fraudulent may require multiple communications between a cardholder and a card processor to resolve and once resolved, will require additional transaction system resources to initiate and process a second transaction, resulting in unnecessary traffic within the electronic transaction processing system. In some instances, misidentification of fraudulent transaction activity may result in the cancellation of a card and may require reissuance of a card and reconfiguration of cardholder account characteristics within an issuer's computer system.
In addition to the system burdens experienced by the electronic transaction processing system, cardholders, merchants, acquirers and issuers are each impacted by falsely identified fraudulent activity. An issuer may be impacted due to lost transactions that would have otherwise been made. The merchant and/or acquirer will be impacted by such lost transactions as well and the cost associated with attempts to authorize declined transactions. The cardholder will be impacted by the increased time, hassle, and possible expense, associated with correcting the inaccurately identified fraudulent transaction.
On the other hand, in many cases activity which is in fact fraudulent may be authenticated by transaction processing systems. For instance, a cardholder's card may be used by an unauthorized party at a merchant and an authorization may be sent by the merchant device to the card processing network. The merchant device may include an identifier associated with a location lying within a geographic area in which a cardholder has recently conducted an authentic transaction or an area in which a cardholder often uses the card. In the past, in such a circumstance, the fraudulent transaction attempt would likely be authenticated.
Further, oftentimes fraudulent activity determinations are made without taking into account decisions of a fraud engine or accounting for possible inaccurate decision making output by a similar type of system and are focused upon the receipt of explicit notification from a cardholder that a card should be blocked or prevented from further use. See, for instance, in U.S. Pat. No. 8,793,188.
In accordance with the above outlined scenarios, there is a need for a technical solution that can ameliorate unnecessary network traffic and other problems associated with misidentified fraudulent transaction attempts as well as increase accuracy in properly identifying transactions which are fraudulent. Further, there is a need for a technical solution that can intercept a decision provided by a fraud engine and perform processing steps to ensure that the fraud engine decision is adequate (e.g., to avoid falsely identifying a transaction as fraudulent).